When I came downstairs this morning it was about 10 degrees in this room so I put the fan heater on straight away.
I sat here for an hour or so, trying to work out the answer to the Internet Problem (Something is wrong on the Internet - how can we fix it?)
Eventually, it dawned on me that the fan heater on its 1 kW setting was not making much progress in heating the room. The temperature had only risen to 11 degrees after more than an hour. My feet were still cold. In fact the bloody fan heater was less than useless - it felt like it was actually making the feet colder.
I'm a bit of a cheapskate, but clearly 1kW was not enough. I bent down to switch the fan heater to its 2 kW setting and ...
... discovered that I had been blasting my feet with cold air for over an hour!
I was getting annoyed by the racket made by the fan heater anyway so I went out and bought a free-standing 1.2 kW halogen heater to use until the combi-boiler has been repaired. (£15 from TOPS in Tod - bargain!)
I'll use full power on the halogen (and a few minutes of full power on the fan heater) to heat the room in a hurry. Hopefully after that I will get away with 800W or even 400W to maintain a comfortable temperature.
One thing I like about the halogen heater is how bright it is - that will help keep my S.A.D. at bay. For that reason I may even keep using it on the lowest power setting once the CH is working again. (I'll have to shield my eyes when watching TV though because the heater is almost as bright as the set!)
I'm going to look at my fuel tariffs and try to work out how much the halogen costs to run compared to the CH for one room. No point in overheating a house occupied by one person who spends most of his time in just one room.